The idle is rough, and for a while Rebecca sits coaxing the motor, talking to it, rocking to spur it on. At the front of the property she jumps out to open the gate and get back in before the vehicle chokes. Her rushing makes the dogs bark and leap up beside her. It’s a comical routine – her tripping over dogs, the shuddering and gulping of the car, her fumbling with the gate latch and yelling at the dogs to stay in the yard, and then the sprint back and the mad scramble behind the wheel. She catches it before it dies, and sits revving the engine to be sure.
She drives through the gate with the car door open. The air is thick with exhaust fumes and dust churned up from where she’s spun the wheels like some hothead. The dogs run out through the gate and spread out in all directions under the line of gums.
‘Hey!’ she shouts. ‘Get back here!’
She gets out and whistles them, blinks the grit from her eyes. In the haze she sees someone walking down the road. The car chooses that moment to chug and cut out. Rebecca flops her head back, looks up at the cloudless sky. ‘Bitch of a thing,’ she mutters.
She gets back in and tries to start the car – but of course it won’t start, and after a few turns it’s flooded. Divine intervention perhaps; it was beginning to feel like too much effort for a cigarette.
A real hassle though, because there’s only one person who would be out walking this time of day, in this heat, dressed in a baseball cap and leggings, white top on, white teeth flashing – perfect, practised smile, like her European-sounding voice – and it’s someone Rebecca doesn’t think she should be seeing right now, not considering what she was doing a couple of hours earlier. She gets the feeling a mother can look into a girl’s eyes and see if that girl has been doing anything untoward with her son, and Mrs Kincaid more than anyone would have that ability – especially now Rebecca knows she’s an artist. It’s only increased the mystical aura around her.
‘Having trouble with the car, Rebecca?’ Mrs Kincaid says.
‘Not meant to be driving anyway … so probably just as well.’ Rebecca climbs out, sees there’s a smear of dirt on her calf and tries to rub it off.
‘Where were you going?’
‘Into town.’
Because Mrs Kincaid is always walking, jogging, riding a bike past the front gate, the dogs bound up to her as though greeting a long-lost member of the pack. Rebecca’s heard Mrs Kincaid’s cultured tones on still afternoons, speaking softly to the dogs through the fence. An animal lover – it’s written all over her. She does the no-eye-contact thing and shows the dogs the back of her hand, curls in her fingers, doesn’t pat them on top of their heads but scratches under their chins.
‘Yes,’ she says in a soft voice, ‘you’re a good boy.’
‘I’ll have to wait,’ Rebecca says, swiping at the long grass by the side of the road with her foot, ‘and try again in a minute.’
The cap shades Mrs Kincaid’s eyes and the top half of her face, but her sculptured chin and full bottom lip give enough of an idea of her beauty; the ponytail, sneakers, lack of make-up all somehow add to this.
‘Isn’t your father home?’
‘Nup.’
‘What do you need in town?’
‘I was …’ Rebecca pulls what feels like a childish expression. ‘I was going in to get a pack of cigarettes.’
‘Oh, well, I can help you with that.’
Mrs Kincaid unzips the money belt she has around her waist and takes out a gold packet of Benson and Hedges.
‘You’ll have to promise not to tell, though. I’m meant to have given up.’
She offers the open pack and Rebecca takes one, unsure whether to say thank you. Mrs Kincaid takes a cigarette for herself and then draws a long black cigarette holder from the money belt. ‘Smells it otherwise,’ she explains, wriggling her fingers in the air.
She comes close, leaning in to light Rebecca’s smoke. At this proximity Rebecca sees Mrs Kincaid’s red nostrils, the flushed skin, puffy eyes, and there’s a banked-up, nasal quality to her voice – her tongue sounds thick in her mouth. It’s the kind of congestion that comes from prolonged crying. Mrs Kincaid’s gaze comes up, knowing she’s been caught. She smiles ruefully and keeps on with the line of conversation.
‘Ben doesn’t like me smoking, and Zach hates it. I’d quite hoped to have a child like you – sneaking out for a smoke. But no such luck. Now I know you’re here I’ll have to make this my stop.’
She lights her cigarette, draws in hard on the slim plastic end of the holder. She looks surreal in her sporty clothes, under the mountain ash, with her 50s movie prop.
‘I should have had a daughter,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I’m a terribly good son mother – do you know what I mean? Women with sons always seem to be so … busy, industrious, at the school doing things, not a minute to spare.’
Smoking in Mrs Kincaid’s company is proving difficult. Rebecca can’t concentrate on the conversation and smoke at the same time. And the brand of cigarettes is stronger than she’s used to – she’s feeling light-headed, like a ten-year-old taking her first puff in the presence of teenagers.
‘I’ve seen you at the school,’ Rebecca manages.
‘But not being industrious, I can assure you. Plenty of minutes to spare.’
They’re quiet for a moment. A gentle afternoon breeze has picked up and is rustling the leaves of the gums. Magpies warble to one another from either side of the road and smaller birds flitter between the trees and hop around like little rodents in the undergrowth. The dogs are making the most of their freedom and are down at the bus shelter, cocking their legs, kicking up leaf litter.
It’s a weird situation – the beat-up car, the two of them, smoking, Mrs Kincaid’s tear-stained face, the memory of Zach in Rebecca’s head. Not what Rebecca expected today, the day proving to be one out of the box, as though tonight she can expect a call from her real father.
‘Zach’s like his father at that age,’ Mrs Kincaid says, as though that’s what they’d been talking about. She pulls a used tissue out of the top of her bra and wipes her nose. ‘I remember seeing Ben at sport meets – cross-country running, long-distance. He was a very good runner. Like Zach.’ She turns to look at Rebecca. ‘Have you seen Zach run?’
‘I’m not much into sports.’
‘He’s very good. He has that build. But not for much longer.’ She pats her upper arm and shoulder. ‘They fill out, no longer able to keep up with the skinny ones, and probably not as interested any more. Then it’s cricket.’ She draws in deeply on her cigarette, and blows it out in a steady stream in front of her. ‘Although Zach plays football – you must have seen him play football?’
‘Not really.’
‘He plays centre … or what do they call it? Ruck? The one at the ball-up in the middle?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘No,’ Mrs Kincaid says, smiling, ‘me neither.’ She flicks her ash. It rolls across the car bonnet. ‘See – I needed a daughter. My house is devoid of anything female. Even the cat is a tom. Surrounded by a million pregnant ewes, though …’ She looks around, through the trees, out across the paddocks. ‘Not terribly inspirational … to some I suppose. Not your place though, your place is lovely.’
Rebecca coughs up a white plume of smoke.
‘Inspirational,’ Mrs Kincaid says. ‘Your mother was inspirational – a real life force. I liked her very much. It seemed cruel to me that she should die. Do you mind me talking this way?’
Rebecca’s still trying to control her coughing; she shakes her head.
‘I thought at the time how unfair it was – so many boring people in the world, especially in Kiona. Quite frankly, you could lose a couple of Ben’s sisters and not even a blip would register on the radar, although I suppose the washing would build up – but the one real person within cooee is the one who’s lost.’ Mrs Kincaid sucks in long and hard on her cigarette, seemingly unaware she’s coming across as nutty. ‘It made the place seem so much flatter when she was gone … I really felt it.’
Rebecca can’t help herself. She says, ‘I didn’t know you knew my mother?’
‘I didn’t. But that’s not to say I didn’t feel an energy like hers leave.’
The dogs are beginning to stray too far. Rebecca whistles at them, fingers curled against her lips, sharp and piercing, deliberately too loud.
Mrs Kincaid winces, but says, once recovered, ‘I’d love to be able to whistle like that.’
Rebecca drops her cigarette and grinds it into the dirt. ‘Zach whistles louder than that,’ she says. ‘You should get him to teach you. He whistles at me from one side of the schoolyard to the other.’
Rebecca demonstrates – the harsh note of it, the derogatory undertones, unmistakable, as though she’s calling a dog.
Mrs Kincaid pushes back the peak of her cap and holds Rebecca’s gaze. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I’ve offended you.’ She waves a hand in front of her face as though to indicate the fog that’s inside her head. ‘I’m sorry.’
The awkwardness, the apologies, only seem to bring them closer. Rebecca looks at her, feels strangely on equal footing. The dogs have come to her whistle. She checks they’re all there, pats some of them, and busies herself putting them in the yard while Mrs Kincaid blows her nose, dabs at her eyes.
‘Rebecca,’ she says, ‘could I ask you a favour?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Could I come into town with you? Would you mind?’
7
Kiona can look pretty when the sun is low, like it is now – everything tawny, amber colours – or it can look flaky and ugly, in proper light. It’s got all the basic requirements of a country town – a pub, a post office, a war memorial, a rotunda in a well-watered park. Tourists pull up on their way through and have lunch at the bakery, sit under the row of deciduous trees, let their kids play on the rusty swing set, use the public toilets and no doubt read about how Rebecca Toyer supposedly takes it up the arse – lovely weekend reading.
Rebecca sits with her feet up on the dash and looks out her open window. Mrs Kincaid is driving. She still pronounces everything
ever so precisely
, still pitches her sentences somewhere between a question and statement, so that it’s hard to know if she’s taking the piss or not, but she seems about ten times more relaxed. She’s no longer smoking with her cigarette holder.
They turn at the town hall and head towards the river. They travel down a picturesque oak-lined street with grassy banks and houses set back on big blocks.
At the end of the street they roll to a stop in front of Emily’s, the only restaurant in town. It’s a refurbished weatherboard house. There are watermarks on the picket fence from the last time the river flooded. It has a cottage garden and one of those milk-can letterboxes. On a chalkboard attached to the fence is a list of specials and above them are the lines
To Whosoever Famishing, to Beggar and to Bee
.
The sign on the door says
Closed
, but Mrs Kincaid says, ‘I’m going in,’ and it’s exactly like that – as though she’s about to embark on an endeavour of epic proportions.
‘Okay. I’ll wait here.’
Before getting out, Mrs Kincaid takes the packet of tobacco she bought at the shop.
Rebecca says, feeling the need to qualify, ‘I have to get back before dark.’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
She leaves and Rebecca rests in the seat and stares for a moment at the interior of the car. She wonders how the hell she’s going to face Zach after this. She’s probably dropped his mother at her lover’s … or something like that.
She hears the clink of a chain and looks over her shoulder to see Mrs Kincaid around at the back gate. She fiddles with the latch, closes the gate behind her. Rebecca watches her walk across the yard. It’s a big mowed expanse, chicken-wire fence, falling-down stay assemblies, a stack of freshly cut firewood and an axe wedged in the splitting block. There are fruit trees and a border of tall lavender. The peak of Mrs Kincaid’s cap and her white T-shirt are visible through the trees for a moment, then the trees thicken and she’s lost behind them.
Rebecca turns back to the front. There’s a cricket match being played on the oval across the river. Rebecca watches the little white figures as they run and field. A dog barks a few streets over and the sounds of the match filter to her. She opens the car door and props her foot in the place between the car body and side-view mirror. She lights a cigarette, unwraps a Violet Crumble, and settles in to watch the game.
Cricket viewed live from a distance proves to be as boring as cricket on TV. Rebecca gets restless and gets out of the car. She wanders down to the river. There are white feathers and duck dander in the reeds and on the very edges of the water, but no actual ducks. To her left the river bends off, becoming deep, the colour of well-brewed tea, and to the right is a footbridge spanning a rocky, shallow section.
No Jumping No Diving
signs on either end of the bridge.
The sun begins to set and the cricket game finishes up. It’s a still afternoon and Rebecca can hear the men congratulate one another, and one man in particular gets pats on the back for his
great catch
; they laugh and there seems to be little or no animosity between the teams. No excitement over winning, no regret over losing.
Rebecca returns to the car and watches the wickets being packed up and the men filing into the clubhouse. Cinnamon-rich and tomato-based smells waft from the restaurant, the two intertwining, as though they’re in there cooking spaghetti sauce and apple crumble at the same time. There’s the clack of dishes being stacked, loud voices and even singing – noises that seem in complete contrast to Mrs Kincaid’s sombre mood on going in there.
Rebecca reaches for a cigarette, decides she’ll go in if Mrs Kincaid isn’t back after this smoke.
A man dressed in cricket whites comes out of the clubhouse with a sports bag over his shoulder and a stubby in his hand. He walks around the backs of the cars, drinking beer, adjusting the bag on his back.
When it becomes clear he’s going to cross the bridge, Rebecca shifts along on the seat so as to keep him in her line of sight. She flicks her ash out the driver’s-side window, recognises him as one of the older local boys, one of a group of five or six, a fixture at the pub, no party complete without them, always so devastatingly handsome when caught beside them alone in a quiet part of a store, or standing with them at a register, but with their life revolving in an orbit so far from yours, little chance of them giving you a sideways glance, the six years between you as good as sixty. She puts out her cigarette and slides back over to the passenger side. The cricketer steps from the bridge and starts her way.